article for the Triple C journal

1. tripleC 9(2): 277-288, 2011
ISSN 1726-670X
http://www.triple-c.at
Theorizing Citizenship in Late Modern ICT Societies
Jakob Svensson
jakob.svensson@kau.se, Karlstad University, Sweden
Abstract: In this paper I discuss a definition of citizenship for better understanding and analyses of political participations in
ICT societies. To achieve this I approach the topic from a comprehensive understanding of developments in society and
technology and how they mutually reinforce each other. Discussions of citizenship are concerned with macro-perspectives,
combining empirical studies of how society and political participation is changing, connected to normative visions of the
good society and how it should be structured; hence citizenship studies are already transdisciplinary. In the article I propose
and understanding of citizenship as the participation and action upon shared meanings on issues of the organization of
society. Citizenship is enacted in political communities; ensembles of people addressing the organization of society and
making sense of this address in a similar way, and at the same time constructing and renegotiating values and norms out of
which the authority of the community streams. And it is in relation to this authority that citizens are made. The paper ends
with a proposal of how to categorize online participation and citizenship(s) in ICT societies.
Keywords: Citizenship, Political Participation, E-participation, Network Society, Convergence, Late Modernity, Governance
When digital information technologies becomes increasingly important for communicating in con-
nected communities, society as well as the individual takes on new and different meanings. Some
scholars connect transformations of communication patterns to us entering into a new kind of soci-
ety, a network society (Benkler, 2006; Shirky, 2009) which according to Castells (2001) is governed
by another form of sociability, networked individualism. With the possibility to communicate many to
many in digital networks, together with enhanced processes of individualization in late modernity, it
is argued that we are leaving mass society behind.
One discipline that has shown particular interest in these developments is Citizenship Studies. In
the area of citizenship, the rise of digital communication and Internet has provided rays of hope for
political engagement with new and different understandings of citizenship participation, in an oth-
erwise dark time of representative democracy marked by civic withdrawal from parliamentary poli-
tics. In connected societies Internet is considered the new arena for political action, often lowering
the political threshold with new and different forms for engaging people in deliberations about the
structure and organization of our society. When more and more people socialize, organize, contrib-
ute, inform and publish their concerns and themselves on the Internet, political participation take on
different meanings and citizenships are enacted differently.
The purpose of this paper is to put forward a theoretically useful definition of citizenship for bet-
ter understandings and analyses of political participations in networked and individualized socie-
ties. To achieve this I believe it is important to avoid deterministic approaches to technology, soci-
ety or the individual and rather adopt a comprehensive understanding of developments in these
areas and how the mutually reinforce each other.
Discussions of citizenship are per se concerned with macro-perspectives, combining behavioral
aspects of inhabitants engagement with more empirical aspects of how society and politics is
changing, connecting empirical studies of participation to normative visions of the good society and
how it should be structured (see Isin & Turner, 2002; Kivisto & Faist, 2007). Citizenship has thus
been a useful concept from many different perspectives and is in this sense already transdiscipli-
nary. This makes the subject interesting to connect to theories of ICT societies, a subject also ap-
proached from many different academic disciplines. I will start discussing citizenship from a socio-
logical understanding of our time as late modern.
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2. 278 Jakob Svensson
1. The Changing Loci of Citizenship in Late Modernity
The victory of liberal democracy and market capitalism, symbolized with the Berlin Wall coming
down 1989 as the last reminiscent of communist society, led Fukuyama (1992) to proclaim the end
of history. Ten years later some theoreticians (Carter & Stokes, 1998; Bauman, 2001) observe the
side effects of liberal democracy; social disintegration and voter alienation. Citizens, in western
liberal societies, more frequently declare themselves to be dissatisfied (Bentivegna, 2006). Market
capitalism as way to organize even public administration under the promise of New Public Man-
agement, seems to have reduced citizenship to consumption, and turned citizens away from tradi-
tional arenas of political participation (Bauman, 2001). Boggs (2000) refers to this as the great re-
treat.
The practices of citizenship are changing. Some claim that inhabitants are withdrawing away
from a supposedly vivid agora full of debating citizens, and becoming increasingly sceptical and
distrusting, with the result of a decrease in political participation. Such a dystopian description is
mostly echoed in parliamentary frameworks. For example, the EU-elections June 2009 were
claimed to be the biggest trans-national elections in history. However, only 43,4 % of the electorate
chose to cast their vote, making participation the lowest in the 30 years of EU election history. Low
participation in elections together with a decreasing faith in politicians and membership in political
parties (Peterson et al., 1989; Olsson, 2006) has launched a debate on civic apathy, distrust and
the legitimacy of parliamentary politics and its representatives.
Despite decreasing participation in parliamentary arenas, there are other sites of political debate,
not solely limiting political participation to representative democracy, suggesting new arenas for
citizenship practices. It is in this context Internet enters into the discussion forwarding a more en-
gaged and interactive picture of the citizenry under the promise of web 2.0 and emerging social
media platforms.
Sociologists explain this in part as a result of us entering a new phase of history: late modernity
(Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1995; Bauman, 2001). Dahlgren (2006) characterizes late modernity by
identifying two interrelated cultural processes at work: dispersion of unifying cultural frameworks
and individualization. The first refers to the increasing pluralization, fragmentation and nichification
of society along lines of ethnicity, media consumption, cultural interests, life styles, interests, tastes
etc (ibid.). Individualization refers to lacking a sense of social belonging and a growing sense of
personal autonomy (ibid.). Disinterest towards political participation on the parliamentary arena and
withdrawal from representative democracy can be understood in the light of these cultural changes.
Bauman (2001), who put forward a dystopic vision of individualism in late modernity, equates the
civic withdrawal away from formal politics, with a larger withdrawal away also from collective identi-
ties and community sensibilities (se also Boggs, 2000). However, a more positive account of late
modern political participation is provided by Beck (1995, 1998) and his concept of sub-politics. He
regards individualization and dispersion of unified cultural frameworks not as necessarily inhibiting
political participation and citizenship. Supporting this more positive account is the rise of new ar-
enas for political participation, such as everyday life at the home, the street or online, arenas with
activities such as signing petitions, voicing concerns and protests by creating and joining new
groups and associations outside the Parliament (Peterson et al., 1989; Beck, 1995; Bennett &
Entman, 2001; Dahlgren, 2001). These groups seem to be more short-lived, single-issue oriented
and digitally managed. But they underline that late modern processes of reflexivity and individuali-
zation have resulted in, not a general withdrawal from political participation, but rather a more life-
style-based approach to politics (Giddens, 1991). It seems that political participation online increas-
ingly has become part of an individual self-realization project.
Societal and cultural changes in late modernity are happening at the same time as we experi-
ence a technological shift towards digitalization and convergence. This is not a coincidence but
rather developments that go hand in hand. Digital technology and processes of late modernity mu-
tually reinforce/ are part of the same transition, challenging our perceptions, not least when it
comes to political participation and citizenship practices. Discussing citizenship within a technologi-
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3. tripleC 9(2): 277-288, 2011 279
cal and digital framework it is important not take on a determinist standpoint on either of technology
and society. Following Ekelin (2007, p. 12) “one must stop regarding technology as predestined,
and abandon the essentialist view of users as unassailable and the attached assumption that use
is the primary condition”. This view is shared among many scholars (see Frau-Meigs, 2007; Andre-
jevic, 2009; Roberts, 2009). Instead more effort should be put into exploring mutual co-construction
of users and technology. The same goes for citizenship. Aspects of citizenship change when social
conditions change (Dobson, 2003, p. 35), hence technology, society and citizenship develop in a
dialectical relationship. The citizen is constituted as a subject of a social practice and at the same
time also constitutes him/ herself as a subject of a certain social (and technological) practice. Citi-
zens are both objects of domination as well as subjects with an ambition to create their own field of
agency (Ekelin, 2007, p. 66). It is in these dialectical practices that we should start to theorize
citizenship in ICT societies.
Before assessing the specifics of citizenship practices and political participation online, I will at-
tend to the more technologically ascribed characteristics of contemporary late modern society
2. Convergence and Network Society
Almost everyone agrees that the rise of digital communication and Internet has been remarkable.
In Media and Communication studies we connect changes in communication patterns to societal
changes at large. For example it can be argued that the advent of the printing press can be tied to
the rise of mass society and mass culture. Horkheimer (1947) and the Frankfurt School were early
to discuss cultural forms as part of a larger societal structure. Today, may scholars (Benkler, 2006;
Shirky, 2009) make a similar argument, connecting digital transformations of communication to
changes in connected societies. With the possibility to communicate many to many in digital net-
works, it can be argued that we are leaving mass society behind. It is important however to avoid
causal explanations and read Internet utopic accounts on Internet critically. A more sceptical An-
drejevic (2009) points out that only because media has transformed, political power has not, sug-
gesting the possibility that political communities may adjust to incorporate digital media in ways that
preserve existing power relations and dominant economic systems. But the implementation of digi-
tal technology has increased the possibility for anyone with Internet connection to construct, join
and participate in online political communities (Benkler, 2006; Lüders, 2007; Shirky, 2009). This is
different from mass society. But what this will lead up to in terms of changing relations of power,
and how and for whom these possibilities will be used, remains to be seen and needs further re-
searched.
One aspect of our changing society is illuminated by the concept convergence. Convergence
became a buzzword in the 1990’s together with concepts of interactivity and the information society
(Storsul & Stuedahl, 2007). Literary, convergence means movement directed to the same point
(Fagerfjord & Storsul, 2007, p. 19). The starting point for assuming media convergence was digi-
talization of signals (ibid., p. 20). In short convergence implies that in new digital environments,
consumption and production of mediated messages are more intertwined and personalized than
before.
Jenkins (2006) describes convergence as a flow of content across multiple media platforms, co-
operation between multiple media industries, but convergence also entails a migratory behaviour of
media audiences. In his book Convergence Culture (2006) he discusses the relationships between
media convergence, collective intelligence and participatory culture. He claims that convergence
encourages participation, complicating relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up
participatory culture (ibid.). It used to be difficult and expensive to mediate images, words and
sounds from a media producer to a consumer. This favoured a complex media industry developing
its own cultures and professions, underlining the division between production and consumption of
information. With digital technology it has become easier to communicate within larger self-made
networks. With this collapse of “communication costs” (Benkler, 2006, p. 212), the division between
media production, media distribution and media consumption becomes increasingly blurred and
converge into one. People both like to consume, produce and share media. Now having the tech-
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4. 280 Jakob Svensson
nological tools that support all these activities, we increasingly do so in one activity. Blogging about
a news report is an example of this. Thus, the act of media consumption is increasingly intercon-
nected with media production and media sharing, making the isolated act of media consumption
rather a temporary behaviour than a permanent identity (Shirky, 2009).
The new digital communication infrastructure challenges traditional media institutions when con-
trol over media and information is less in the hands of the media professional (ibid.). As an exam-
ple, mass media’s gate-keeping function and monopoly on news framing is challenged through
blogs and social media where communication is fast, far-reaching and networked. However con-
vergence is an ambiguous concept since it is used differently both with regard to what is converg-
ing and what happens when something converges (Storsul & Stuedahl, 2007). Fagerfjord & Storsul
(2007, p. 29) is also calling for a more complex framework for participatory culture than conver-
gence invites.
3. Citizenship, Participation and the Political
So how should we connect citizenship and political participation to the societal changes in digital,
networked and late modern societies? Citizenship is often linked to privileges of membership of a
political community (most often a nation state), privileges that consist of equal participation with
fellow citizens on the making of the collective decisions that regulate social life of that political
community (Barbalet, 1988, p. 2-4; Castles & Davidson, 2000, p. 32-33; Hoffman, 2004, p. 98; Bel-
lamy, 2008, p. 1). Hence, citizenship is often used to describe a set of institutions, practises and
identities connected to people’s aspirations for democracy and equality (Bosniak, 2006, p. 11).
Discussions of citizenship usually revolves around its substance, its location and its subjects (ibid.,
p. 17). Thus larger concepts of citizenships have come to encompass a variety of elements in
Social and Political Sciences, from the legal and sociological to the psychological and behavioural.
Today there is a huge interest in citizenship, an interest which manifests itself not least through the
many new types of citizenships continuously proliferating (see Dobson, 2003, p. 4, Hoffman, 2004,
p. 1; Kivisto & Faist, 2007, p. 2).
The widespread use of the notion creates confusion what it actually entails and how it could be
used (Bosniak, 2006, p. 4). Looking through the literature I come to realize that ideas of citizenship
have not been static, understandings have changed, been reshaped and hence also extended
meanings of the concept to new subjects and domains (Schuck, 2002, p. 131; Bosniak, 2006, p.
121). The question then arises; how is citizenship to be understood to be relevant and usable in
late modern ICT societies, marked by digitalization, pluralization and individualization?
Discussing citizenship here I will mostly attend to its substance and location; what citizenship is
and where it takes place, dealing with sociological and behavioural aspects of citizenship. This has
of course implications for its subjects, who will get included or excluded and power relations (see
Isin & Wood, 1999; Bosniak, 2006), even though this is not the main focus of this paper. Questions
of the substance and location of citizenship and its changes in late modernity, will inevitably get
entangled into a discussion of our conceptions of the political and participation. Analyzing citizen-
ship(s) then is impossible without attending to definitions of participation and the political. I need to
attend to all these concepts and their interconnections and I start with citizenship.
3.1. Citizenship
In increasingly globalised and non-territorial communities, the question has been posed whether if
it is outdated and problematic to conceive of citizenship as membership. However, globalization
doesn’t imply equal relations of interdependence since it is an asymmetrical process where some
(in the south) are more dependent than others (in the north) (Dobson, 2003, p. 12-13). For both
these reasons the idea has been put forward that citizenship privileges should be expanded to all
human beings, equating the category of citizen to humans in general (Turner, 1994; Linklater,
2002; Lister, 2002; Smith, 2002, p. 105-106; Hoffman, 2004; Bellamy, 2008, p. 77). It is obvious
that the normative weight of universality attached to citizenship has made the concept a useful tool
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5. tripleC 9(2): 277-288, 2011 281
for political struggle, to fight injustice and to claim recognition for different and marginalized groups
in society (see Cruikshank, 1999, p.1; Lister, 2002; Bosniak, 2006, p. 35). This underlines an ambi-
guity within the concept; citizenship is associated with community belonging at the same time as it
should apply to all human beings (Bosniak, 2006, p. 18). My argument is that in order to keep its
relevance as an analytical tool, it is vital to make a distinction between human beings and citizens
(Svensson, 2008). In a similar argument Dobson (2003, p. 27) and Bellamy (2008, p. 79) underline
citizenship as a specific kind of relationship that should not be broadened to encompass human
relations generally. According to Aristotle (discussed in Dobson, 2003, p. 66), citizenship is always
related to a constitution rather than humanity. From a similar perspective, I believe that recognizing
some centre of power is important in order for the possibility for directing right claims as a citizen as
well as accepting duties and regulations put on you as a citizen. In this sense, the practice of
citizenship also entails accepting decisions made by others, or some sort of authority (polis), as
implied by Aristotle’s definition of citizens as ruling and being ruled in turn (discussed in Bellamy
2008, p. 32-35). Also civic republicanism recognizes political authority as important for attaching
civic virtues to (Dobson, 2003, p. 61). Therefore I have argued that citizenship is best understood
as participation in a relation to some kind of authority (Svensson, 2008, p. 23). Citizen participation
in a political community also constructs the political authority as well as the citizen.
Discussing citizenship as a form of membership practices, it is important to keep in mind that in
contemporary globalised ICT societies, political community doesn’t have to come in the shape of a
nation state. The notion of political community doesn’t imply per se that the community has to be
bounded to territoriality (Dobson 2003, p. 72) or predetermined. Defining community around boun-
daries of interest and meaning making instead makes more sense in a reflexive late modern soci-
ety with digital communication that in many cases transcends state territory and unites users
around cultural interests, life styles and tastes.
In a similar fashion Bruns (2009, p. 11) discusses online communities as groups of people with a
set of shared values, beliefs, norms and ideas. These shared values, norms and ideas then consti-
tute the core of the political community, out of which authority is constituted and claimed. Adher-
ence to, and socialisation into, community values then becomes important for determining relations
and power mechanisms within a community (Bruns, 2009, p. 5). For example, joining an online
petition against the destruction of nearby bathhouse, as I did, I soon realized that online visibility
through activities such as facebooking and twittering would get me closer to the core of the activist
group. By echoing popular argument through #twittering and through posting encouraging entries
on the facebook fan page, I was not only showing my sympathy for the participatory and expressive
values of the activist group, but I also reinforced these values and reinforced the authority of certain
other active group members by commenting and retweeting their tweets.
However community norms and values are not fixed but subject to constant renegotiation and
gradual change (Bruns, 2009, p. 11). Hence, communities in contemporary late modern ICT soci-
eties are porous, casual and debated constellations (Delanty 2002, p. 171-172) and thus far from
predetermined. A citizen’s relation to the political community cannot be fixed and needs constant
renegotiation. In late modernity we should also consider a network of more discursive political
communities that citizens are potential members in (Dobson, 2003, p. 74). Meaning making as the
defining character of political community enables us to theorize about citizenship in a late modern
and globalised society, making citizenship relevant even in a society characterised by reflexivity,
physical and communication mobility and reach. An analysis of citizenship from this perspective
implies that we should look for in order to understand citizenship is processes of value negotiation
and other meaning-making conditions that give ground for community authority in relation to which
citizenships are enacted. As I mentioned in the previous section, the loci for such meaning making
processes are changing in late modern ICT societies.
3.2. Participation
An analysis of citizenship will almost always get into a discussion of rights and duties (Pocock,
1995). Applying the above discussion of the fluidity of (political) communities, civic rights and duties
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6. 282 Jakob Svensson
cannot be conceived of as fixed or stable entities. The rights that define citizenship are undergoing
continual process of redefinition, not least through the political participation of citizens themselves.
Accepting such structuring and dialectic relationship between community and participation, partici-
pation becomes entangled into the very core of the concept of citizenship. In this sense citizenship
as membership with rights and benefits attached to it, cannot be sustained without members par-
ticipating for the forth living of citizenship and its promise of equality, tolerance and democracy.
Citizenship thus implies the capacity to participate and the duty to use this capacity on which our
other rights and democracy depend (Bellamy, 2008, p. 13, 17, 25).
Participation then is so fundamental to citizenship that it is discussed both as a right and a duty.
Bellamy (2008, p. 3) claims that the mere possibility for equal participation affects how citizens
regard their other duties such as abiding laws, paying taxes et cetera. From this perspective justice
and equality becomes important as the social bonds that ties community members together as
citizens. Dobson (2003) forwards justice rather than charity as defining the civic bond, and by doing
this, distinguishes political from human community and citizenship from humanity. The promise of
just and equal participation motivates us to collaborate with our fellow citizens.
Cruikshank (1999, p. 2) argues that modes of constituting and regulating (technologies) citizen-
ship, transform individual subjects into citizens. In this way participation and power becomes en-
tangled into each other. The will to empower through regimes of participatory democracy is both
enabled and constrained by relations of power. The discussion board on a municipal webpage for
example, is enabled by democratically elected representatives and their wish to be in dialogue with
the citizenry. However, since these representatives also holds the decision-making power, what
comes out of these deliberations is completely in their hands. Cruikshank (1999, p. 34) points out
that contemporary non-participation and political disinterest places a strain upon liberal democratic
government. In her analysis, the quest for empowering the poor and self-governing programmes for
disenfranchised, are embedded in a liberal discourse of governance with all its asymmetrical power
relations attached to it. In this way she argues that citizens are not born, but made through demo-
cratic modes of governance (ibid., p. 3). Governance in this perspective is defined as relations of
power that aim to guide and shape the actions of others (citizens), rather than force control and
domination (ibid., p. 4), and hence a more subtle and sophisticated way of exercising power. ICT
can very well be used for these purposes as municipal discussion boards online are examples of.
Cruikshank thus underlines that democratic relations, also in a more late modern, many-to-may
and digitalized society, still constitutes relations of power.
Power should thus be constitutive to every analysis of citizenship and not just an add-on (see
also Dobson, 2003, p. 21, 62). Citizens are made and therefore subject to power even as they par-
ticipate as citizens in their own right (Cruikshank, 1999, p. 20, 24). Connecting the power argument
to the discussion of communities, it is in the construction and negotiation of community authority,
through its values and norms, that power manifests itself. For example, who has the time, verbal
and technological capacities to maintain participatory and expressive values in online activist
movements? Cruikshank (1999, p. 32, 45) claims that power can both be voluntary and coercive at
the same time, and she discusses political power as an ongoing result of forming and reforming
authority.
From the above discussion on participation and power, it becomes obvious that citizenship is
best understood as an activity, the act of doing something, rather than a fixed status, membership
merely ascribing certain people as citizens and non-citizens (see also Svensson 2008, p. 23). From
a discursive framework, citizenship is best analyzed as a process, conflating political participation
with citizenship so it becomes almost the same thing. Turner (1994, p. 159) for example uses a
definition of citizenship as an ensemble of meaning making practices that constitutes individuals as
members in a community. The character of this community is influenced by peoples’ participation,
which in turn is influenced by the political authority in relation to which citizens participate.
To sum up the discussion of citizenship then, it consists of three components; membership, par-
ticipation, rights and duties, components that stand and fall together (Bellamy, 2008, p. 16, 25), but
where participation is dominant. Membership and participation is tied to a political community.
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7. tripleC 9(2): 277-288, 2011 283
Rights and duties are attached to this community together with the possibility of free and equal
participation in the community’s political processes.
3.3. The Political
The previous definition of citizenship makes the notion of the political relevant to the theoretical
framework. Some argue (Smith, 2002; Bosniak, 2006) that citizenship could refer to any group, not
only political ones or the nation state. But the sphere where citizenship will be enacted is commonly
understood as political (Bosniak, 2006, p. 20), or it becomes political when certain actions and
identities are performed there (which is increasingly the case in late modernity which ideas of sub-,
and life-politics underline (see Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1995)). The crucial question then becomes
what the political consists of? What differentiates political communities from ordinary communities?
What types of actions and identities differentiate a community so it can be considered political?
What differentiates political participation from ordinary participation? Does the political merely con-
note a collective dimension and dimension of shared common purposes (as the republicans would
have it, see Dobson, 2003, p. 59)? Is then political participation the same as members’ practices
that are directed towards collective goals for the common good of the membership collective? A too
narrow definition of the political may be limiting our perspectives, but on the other hand a too broad
definition makes it useless as an analytical tool classifying and understanding contemporary
citizenship(s).
The political has a normative dimension because it deals with how society should be structured
(Nord 2008, p. 36). But our visions of good society are constantly changing, this pointing towards a
definition of the political as a social and discursive construction, continuously being defined by citi-
zens’ practices (see Cruikshank, 1999, p. 17; Dahlgren 2001, p. 40, 42). The practice of politics,
understood here as the address of issues concerning the organization of society, is most often
based in a principle of equality, an equal division of society’s common goods (Rancière, discussed
by Arsenjuk, 2005, p. 88, 91-92). Also according to Dobson (2003, p. 29) the principle of equal
share entails a political type of obligation, opening up for a conception of citizenship beyond that
state and beyond some kind of universal humanity. Different groups/ communities may have diver-
gent opinions on the equal division of society’s common goods and thus enter into debate with
each other. From this perspective, it becomes important to bring justice and equality into the dis-
cussion of the political, since these concepts seem to be entangled into each other.
The organization of society many times concerns the everyday life. Thus the political is also ne-
gotiated and reconstituted at a micro-level (Cruikshank, 1999, p. 5). Citizenship is also negotiated
in the therapeutic, disciplinary, programmatic, institutional and associational activities of everyday
life (ibid., p. 28), hence the private sphere constitutes a site of power relations and political struggle
(Dobson, 2003, p. 53, 56) where ideas of the structure and organization of society are expressed
and put into practice. Identity politics such as the feminist and gay movement are examples of this.
In this way the dichotomy private versus public becomes inadequate for defining the political (and
many other perspectives for that matter). Beck (1995, p. 143) underlines that politics is also shaped
by the individual, not only social and collective agents. Choosing to stay home with the kids is in
this sense a very political decision for example.
Citizenship rights are attached to individuals, but the argument for having those rights has an
important collective dimension (Bellamy, 2008, p. 14-15). They appeal to certain goods for human
beings leading a life together with others, they appeal to how society should be structured in an
equal and just manner. It is a political community of members who can grant rights, in which mem-
bers (citizens) seek fair terms of association to secure those goods necessary for them to pursue
their doings on just and equal terms with fellow members (Pocock, 1995, p. 33; Bellamy, 2008, p.
16). Society and the individual are thus not in a dichotomised relation to each other, both are cent-
ral for the political. Governance for example is a way of framing agency from an individual as well
as a collective perspective (Cruikshank, 1999, p. 9). Hence it makes no sense to speak of the po-
litical, the social, the technological, the private or the public as separate domains. In this manner
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8. 284 Jakob Svensson
changes in the social (late modernity) and technological (digitalization) opens up for new possibili-
ties for political action.
Combining the above discussion of the political with a definition of community based in an idea
of similar practices of meaning-making, we end up with an understanding of political community as
an ensemble of people addressing the organization of society and making sense of this address in
a similar way, at the same time constructing and renegotiating values and norms out of which the
authority of the community streams, in relation to which citizens are made. When people then par-
ticipate and act upon shared meanings, address issues of the structure of society in relation to an
authority, they enter into the practice of citizenship. In this way we can distinguish between political
participation from other kinds activities.
Political participation doesn’t have to be purposeful engagement though as civic republicans
would argue (see Boniak, 2006, p. 92). In late modernity the political may occur outside of the Par-
liament and all over the sociocultural landscape. Citizenship practices don’t have to originate from
within a self-proclaimed political community such as on soccer fan-pages where immigrant players
are discussed for example. What is also happening in late modernity is that the locations and
communities for the deliberation of the organizing of society are becoming increasingly digital, fuel-
ling new kinds of citizenship behaviour. Digital technology and its uses for political, democratic and
participatory practices, influence behaviours of both citizens and elected representatives, also set-
ting up new frames of what may be considered appropriate topics and practices in these communi-
ties. These digital changes of location and thus also norms and values to citizenship communities
in late modernity inevitably impact the substance of citizenship and our conceptions of the political.
The political thus becomes entangled with citizenship and participation, implying that an attempt to
understand participation and citizenship in an increasingly digital society, at the same time is an
inquiry into the changing construction of the political. In other words, when citizenship practices are
changing together with its arenas and emerging new communities, the conceptions of the political
are also changing. For example blogging about your life as a home wife is considered political to-
day.
Why spending so much time trying to sort out definitions of citizenship, participation and the po-
litical? In the debate on Internet and its democratic and citizenship potential, utopists tend to
equate every link, every social forum as a sign of political participation, whereas others dismiss so-
called online political participation as narcissistic self-promotion. Interactivity isn’t automatically
political it has to be made political (Andrejevic, 2009), hence it is important to know exactly what we
are talking about when we delineate practices as political or not, civic or not. A definition of citizen-
ship as outlined above as practices in relation to some kind of political community with authority
attached to it (in the form of constructing and negotiating community values and norms) is import-
ant in order to distinguish political participation online from other kinds of online activities.
As I will attend to next, the discussion of changing loci of deliberations on how to structure soci-
ety (the political) implies that citizenship practices don’t have to take place from within self-
proclaimed political communities. I will end this paper with a suggestion of how to categorize par-
ticipation and citizenship online
4. Categorizing the Field of E- Participation and I-Citizenship
One framework for categorizing citizenship practices and political participation is to make distinc-
tions between online political communities based on initiative and locality. First of all we have what
I chose to label parliamentary communities, a top-down initiative localizing political participation
within a representative democratic community. Within parliamentary communities Internet (e-
democracy, e-governance, e-administration) is used to promote and revitalize representative de-
mocracy. This has been labelled E-democracy from above (Coleman & Blumler, 2009) since it is
done from a top-down perspective, politicians or governmental officials launching different initia-
tives to engage and interest the citizenry in its doings. The municipal forums online for discussions
with politicians are examples of parliamentary online communities.
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9. tripleC 9(2): 277-288, 2011 285
The political system also includes civic organizations outside the Parliament, such as NGO’s
(non governmental organizations) as well as individual citizens in loosely organized gatherings and
groupings. These more bottom-up activist communities are different from parliamentary communi-
ties, where citizens themselves (or together) engage in, or initiate, political activities and collective
action through and with the help of digital tools. The activist group protesting against the destruc-
tion of the neighbourhood bathhouse is an example of an activist community.
Having outlined a constructivist understanding of the political and citizenship practices in late
modernity, it is also important to include more popular or cultural communities where the political
(and hence also citizenship) may pop up everywhere in the popular and cultural sphere, not pri-
marily set up for political or citizenship purposes. Internet is the life- and sub-political medium par
excellence, heightening cultural processes such as pluralisation, fragmentation, nichification and
individualization. Soccer fan pages online are examples of cultural communities.
A distinction of online participation and citizenship practices between parliamentary, activist and
cultural communities I believe is beneficial for analytical purposes separating and classifying differ-
ent political practices online. However it is important to keep in mind that these communities may
blur into each other, intersect in networks and sometimes difficult to separate. As Ekelin (2007, p.
68-69) underlines, exercising citizenship by electronic means, could be regarded as a continual
activity, based on co-construction, blurring boundaries between parliamentary authorities, activist,
private actors and inhabitants. Politics and power are properties of relationships between these
actors (Ekelin, 2007, p. 74).
From an activist community perspective the Internet is a more egalitarian platform for communi-
cation that transcends territoriality and state censorship. This is widely discussed by Shirky in his
book Here Comes Everybody (2009). From an activist point of view, the more free and less authori-
tarian infrastructure online networks provides, the more democratic potential they have, such as
political actions opposing election results in countries such as Iran (Christensen, 2009) have bear
witness on. Jenkins (2006) is also theorizing Internet participation from a bottom-up perspective,
but he is discussing participation in a more popular cultural community setting. What digital tech-
nology does for activist and popular cultural communities is to remove barriers to collective action:
locality of information and barriers to group action (Shirky, 2009, p. 153). Digital technology enhan-
ces cooperation and coordination for group action towards ends that is sometimes hard to predict.
Loosely structured groups are often coordinated without managerial supervision. However a shared
digital platform may conclude with cooperation and even collective action. In order for this to hap-
pen shared beliefs and values are important (Shirky, 2009, p. 163). Awareness, beliefs and values
may be (are) communicated through digital tools. Especially from an activist community perspec-
tive, digital tools enable like-minded people to act collectively without having to go through official
organizations, territorial barriers and state censorship. Prominent examples are the protests and
gatherings against election results in Moldova and Iran 2009. But there are also examples from
western democracies of this kind of activism. In Sweden, for example, online communities of blog-
gers managed to put issues of surveillance, integrity and privacy to debate in connection to the
passing of a law giving the state rights to record its citizens (FRA). The politicians largely framed
the issue in an anti-terrorist discourse, but through the bloggers and webpages opposing the pass-
ing of this law, they managed to create an opinion and get the initial proposal turned down in the
Parliament.
Parliamentary online communities often depart from a deliberative understanding of democracy
consisting of debating and public spirited citizens, attentive to the interests of others, and willing to
transform their preferences in process of deliberation (Dryzek, 2000). Within parliamentary online
communities there is also a more instrumental understanding of e-government as aiming at ration-
alizing and modernizing public administration and its relations with citizens, enabling to realize a
better and more efficient administration (Ekelin, 2007, p. 1). In this sense Internet and digital media
are used within an instrumental discourse, providing citizens with better access to, and information
on, public programmes. Side by side with this instrumental discourse Ekelin (2007) discusses e-
government as also considering citizens active contribution. In this almost contradictory discourse,
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10. 286 Jakob Svensson
e-participation is described as processes of governance through deliberative discussions with the
dual purpose of both empowering citizens and helping to renew the representative democratic
model of democracy and fight the perceived growing democratic deficit (Ekelin, 2007, p. 22). Within
the deliberative discourse e-participation is envisioned to benefit citizens, raise citizens’ interest for
politics, open up for increased direct civic involvement, active citizen participation, and the overall
modernisation of the governmental sector (Ekelin, 2007, p. 21). Internet practices within this
framework are often envisioned as form of virtual agora of ideas and rational discussion.
Important to keep in mind that even though e-government slips between an instrumental dis-
course of administrative rationalisation and a deliberative discourse of e-participation (Ekelin, 2007,
p. 23), it is almost always framed from a top-down perspective within parliamentary communities, in
the service of representative democracy (as opposed to activist and popular cultural communities).
Within parliamentary communities e-government tends to reinforce the consultation aspect rather
than empowerment and direct decision-making (see Ekelin, 2007, p. 26-27). However, there are
examples of top-down e-participatory initiatives that aim for bottom-up participation. Local issues
discussion forums (see Smith, 2009) for example aspire to generate a permanent local issue-based
deliberative debate that invigorates local democracy from the bottom-up.
5. Conclusion
Convergence, predicting a loss of control of old media institutions, together with bottom up per-
spectives on political participation an municipal deliberative experiments, suggest more possibilities
for ordinary citizens to express themselves and organize group action, implying in a sense that
everything is in the hands of the connected user. However, we need to be aware of that processes
of governance sometimes preserves existing power relations and we also need to be aware of the
ways commercial interests increasingly are monetizing on the information we generate about our
networks and ourselves in for example social media. Some claim (see Terranova, 2004; Andre-
jevic, 2007) that the blurring of the categories of consumer and producer is a way to exploit free
labour. It is also important to keep in mind that non-benevolent authorities and commercial interests
may also use digital platforms in order to gather information about their citizens and potential con-
sumers (Andrejevic, 2007; Christensen, 2009). Thus, theorizing citizenship(s) in ICT societies it is
important not to put the issue of power aside, since communication in networks also will be un-
equal, divisive and stratifying, with certain nodes in the networks of online communities, being more
important than others (Dobson, 2003, p. 19). As Andrejevic (2009) points out, Google will provide
me with a free a-mail address if I let them data-mine my messages. Facebook will help me keep in
touch with friends if I let them use information I post to learn about me and eventually target market
to me (ibid.). Digital technology may very well be used from a top-down perspective, as was also
the case in Iran with authorities gathered information about who was interacting with foreign ser-
vers and acting upon this information (Christensen, 2009). Not only the citizens have more informa-
tion and networking possibilities available than ever before to act upon, monitoring capabilities of
digital technology combined with increasing possibilities for data storage and sorting, marketers
and nation states have access to unprecedented amounts of information about customers and
citizens (Andrejevic, 2009).
I conclude though with an observation that in connected societies, Internet is considered and
used, as a new arena for political participation and action, both by established political communi-
ties, as well as by activist communities, resulting in lowering the threshold for participation and
action, with new and different forms for engaging in politics, sometimes with the political even pop-
ping up in other non outspokenly political communities all over the socio-cultural landscape.
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About the Author
Jakob Svensson
Dr. Jakob Svensson (Karlstads universitet) is a young researcher with a PhD in Media and Communication Studies (12 June
2008). His particular interest is in Civic Communication and the construction of citizenship through communicative practices.
Jakob is currently holding a position of an assistant professor (senior lecturer) in Media and Communication Studies at
Karlstad University and is the director of the research network HumanIT (www.kau.se/en/humanit).
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